Yesterday, 300,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge waving Palestinian flags, chanting slogans, and turning the world’s media lens squarely on their cause. It was a staggering and unfortunate sight — a sea of keffiyehs and banners, a thunderous show of pro-terror force that looked like Australia had spoken with one voice: we hate Israel, and Jews in this country beware.
But let me be clear: that voice did not speak for all Australians. It did not even speak for most Australians. It spoke for an organized, disciplined, and unapologetic movement of hatred and bigotry — one that has figured out how to use mass mobilization and street dominance to claim moral legitimacy.
Where was the Jewish response?
We are, once again, absent. Silent. Behind closed doors, writing checks for the campaigns of public pro-Israel officials, calling senators, whispering into the ears of influencers.
But we do not march! We do not take over bridges. We do not own the streets. And in today’s world, that means we do not own the public narrative.
This is a crisis of strategy. For decades, the Jewish community — especially in the Diaspora — has relied on a model of influence rooted in financial contributions, political access, and insider diplomacy. We host elegant galas. We endow academic chairs. We issue press releases and sponsor conferences. We support social media influencers.
All of this may have worked in a different era. But that era is largely over. Even social media, when it comes to defending Israel, sits at the back of the bus compared to public demonstrations and marches.
What we are seeing today is the failure of a Holocaust-mentality model — one forged in the belief that money and quiet influence could save us.
That model - money, bribery, and buying protection where available - has its roots in a real history. During the Holocaust, there were heartbreaking attempts by desperate Jews to use money as a shield — to bribe Nazi officials, to purchase exit visas, to secure life through gold and currency. Sometimes it worked. Usually it didn’t. But the memory endured: money might be our best defense.
During the Holocaust Jews were reduced to hiding valuables - gold, diamonds, in the seams of their underwear in the hope that they might bribe a single SS henchmen into pointing right instead of left at the selection lines for the Auschwitz crematoria.
This followed an earlier mentality of 2000 years of antisemtism where, deprived of our ability to publicly affirm our rights, we were reduced to behind the scenes begging, pleading, and bribing would-be protectors. That if we were just respectable enough, connected enough, affluent enough, we could buy a tiny measure of safety.
The SS famously demanded a massive tonnage of gold from the Jews of Rome in 1943, which the Jews somehow scrounged together from Jewelry, wedding rings, and Torah decorations.
It made no difference. The Jews were still deported to Auschwitz in October, 1943 without a word of public protest by Pius XII.
Even further back in Jewish history, whenever Jews were threatened by the whims of popes, kings, or emperors, their first instinct was often to find someone to pay off. To be sure, nearly all jews were dirt poor. But collectively they might cobble together enough rubles or ducats to help finance a new cathedral. Lend money to the crown. Pay for protection. Again, it sometimes bought temporary security. But always at the price of even further extortion.
Now, there is no comparison to be held between the corrupt Popes of the Renaissance, the antisemitic kings and queens of Spanish Inquisition Spain, and today.
Our Senators, Congressman, and state legislators are, for the most part honest, upright. And those who receive contributions from the Jewish community are often evangelical Christians or Catholics like the great Secretary of State Marco Rubio who, as a Senator from Florida, was Israel’s great protector and would have supported the Jew’s regardless of financial backing for or against. The same is true of giants like Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and, most important of all, Israel’s greatest ever friend in the White House, President Donald Trump. I believe President Trump has a congenital love for the Jewish people and believes in a historical responsibility to protect them.
But for all that, the American Jewish communal strategy of relying more on political influence over massive and visible street marches and demonstrations is failing. And that strategy is not only outdated — it’s actively harmful. Because the battlefield has shifted. Antisemitism is no longer just a problem of elite halls and legislative chambers. It’s in the streets. It’s in the media. It’s on social platforms. It’s being shouted in protests and projected on buildings.
Our enemies are marching — and we are reading about it on social media. They are organizing — and we are donating. They are forming visible, vocal coalitions of grievance — and we are content with private influence that has no public face.
It’s not enough anymore. Influence without presence is impotence.
And here’s the most painful part: we have the numbers. We have the passion. We have the youth. We have the moral clarity. We have tens of millions of Christian supporters in the United States alone. What we don’t have is the will to organize.
Why is there not a million-man march for Israel in New York City? Why are we not filling the streets of Los Angeles and Washington, London and Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin? Why, when antisemitic mobs chant “Globalize the Intifada,” are we not responding with chants of “Am Yisrael Chai”? Why have we ceded the streets to those who would celebrate the murder of our people?
This is not a matter of funding. Jewish organizations can raise the money. This is a matter of vision. A matter of courage. A matter of priorities.
We’ve allowed ourselves to believe that visibility is dangerous. That Jews marching en masse might stir resentment. That we’re better off keeping our heads down and our wallets open. But the lesson of the last year — of October 7th and the brutal Hamas massacre, of college campuses turned into war zones, of Jews beaten in the streets of New York and London, murdered in Colorado and Washington, is that silence is not safety. Respectability is not protection. Money is not armor.
Our enemies understand something we’ve forgotten: politics is theater. And the street is the stage.
You can buy a seat at the table. But if the mob owns the street, it owns what the public perceives to be the moral high ground. And the media will follow the mob every time.
It’s time we got loud. It’s time we showed up — not just at fundraisers, but on the front lines of the public discourse. With our bodies, our voices, our children, our flags.
Imagine 500,000 Jews and allies marching for Israel through Times Square, through Whitehall, across the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brandenburg Gate. Imagine a sea of blue and white, singing Hatikvah, holding pictures of the hostages, holding hands with Holocaust survivors and Israeli soldiers alike. Imagine what message that would send to the world.
We don’t need permission. We need conviction.
Let me say something that should not be controversial: we deserve to take up space. We deserve to walk proudly, to declare our truth, to show that the Jewish people are not afraid — and will never be erased.
This is not about mimicry. We don’t need to copy the slogans of our enemies. But we do need to reclaim our voice. To step out of the shadows of our past and into the light of modern resistance.
Fighting antisemitism in the 21st century requires more than funding. It requires fire. It requires presence. It requires Jewish pride, unapologetically and publicly displayed.
The world is watching. Right now, it sees streets filled with those who chant for our destruction. If we remain absent, that image will harden into reality.
But if we rise, if we organize, if we fill the world’s capitals with our love for Israel and our defiance against hate — then the world will have to reckon with a new truth:
The Jews are not afraid.
Supporting our true friends in Congress - like the great Richie Torres and the incomparable Senator John Fetterman - is critical. They deserve it and they need it won elections against all those who hate them for standing up for the Jews. But let us stop earning influence, alone. Let us start building presence.
Let the world see who we really are.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is “America’s Rabbi.” He is the author of “Kosher Hate,” “Judaism for Everyone,” and many other works. Follow him on X, Instagram, and Facebook @RabbiShmuley.